John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore

John Murray (1730-25 February 1809), better known as Lord Dunmore, was Governor of Virginia from 1771 to 1775, succeeding Norborne Berkeley and preceding Patrick Henry. Murray, a nobleman from Scotland, led Virginia in Lord Dunmore's War against the Native Americans along the Appalachians before leading British troops and loyalists against patriots during the American Revolutionary War.

Biography
John Murray was born in 1730 in Tymouth, Scotland, and he joined the British Army in 1750 despite his family's loyalty to the Jacobites, and Murray became Earl Dunmore in 1756 after his father and uncle died. In 1770, Murray was sent to North America to become Governor of New York, but when Norborne Berkeley died in 1771, Murray was quickly sent to fill his position as Governor of Virginia. In 1774, as anti-British sentiment grew, Murray led the colonists into Lord Dunmore's War against the Shawnee and other frontier tribes; he was accused of bringing the colonial militia into conflict with the Shawnee to kill of several would-be patriots in anticipation of the American Revolution spreading to the province. He failed to take serious action against the Second Continental Congress in 1775, and Patrick Henry made a pro-patriot stance in Virginia. On 8 June, the rebels under Patrick Henry stormed his mansion in Williamsburg to force the loyalists out of Virginia, and Murray was wounded in the leg and forced to flee on a ship. The riots ended in an American victory, and Virginia joined the revolution. On 7 November 1775, Dunmore attempted to gain the support of the African-Americans for the loyalist cause by emancipating all slaves that fought alongside the British, forming the Ethiopian Regiment to fight for the loyalists. He won the Battle of Kemp's Landing, but at the Battle of Great Bridge his force was destroyed. 500 of the 800 black loyalists died of smallpox, and on 1 January 1776 he had Norfolk burned, and he returned to England in July 1776, receiving pay for his role as governor until the war's end in 1783. In 1787, he became governor of the Bahamas, and he served in this post until 1796. Murray died in Ramsgate, Kent in 1809.